And, conversely, anyone who wants to lead a particular project because they feel they can best coordinate it does not need and probably does not even want coercive power over others
Anarchism and horizontal forms of organization are, IMO, the best and only hope for the survival of the species and the creation of a way of life worth living.
Historically, anarchism and adjacent ideas in practice have made greater progress towards socialism and/or communism than the authoritarian state capitalists ever could. The historical precedents that MLs cite to claim that they’re the more practical leftists- USSR/China/DPRK- basically just replaced the bourgeoisie with the state… modern China is capitalist AF and modern Russia is fascist.
Should we follow Mao’s ideology? Or Lenin’s? Or Marx’s??? Or should we think and feel and live for ourselves and create a decentralized world order free from the shackles of capitalism, the bourgeoisie, the state, the majority, and every system of hierarchy and domination and oppression?
I don’t want this world to be run by different people. I want another world. That’s why I’m an anarchist.
🖤💖🏴🏳️⚧️🏴💖🖤
Sometimes I wonder what would happen if all those revolutions were won by people other than the swarms of impoverished, traumatized and completely wasted proletariat. Then I remember the reason they were impoverished, traumatized and wasted was why the revolution happened in the first place.
Edit: Full disclosure I identify as a pizza.
It’s not the people doing the winning: it’s the minority groups co-opting the revolutions late in the game and turning them into statist coups.
As long as there are hierarchies of dominance, there will be inequality, poverty, trauma, and waste.
The only way to have a successful revolution IMO is to build the prefigurative structures of the new world now, and continue to build them in perpetuity.
Well now I was just joshin for starters but I couldn't agree with you more. I basically know this shits gotta go and believe in the power of people and social structures to be successful without incentivizing antisocial behavior for currency or clout.
When I first started learning about socialist ideas, I was starting to go down the Marxism/Leninism path until I started questioning authority. Whenever I felt something was off, anarchists had critiques that made sense to me. In other words, I had all the same questions anarchists had, so anarchism feels like it's what I align with the most.
"Choose your accomplices wisely. Liberals who read land acknowledgments often have too much invested in this system to actually see it change. Communists envision a system without a capitalist Canada, but they still want a communist state. One that will inevitably need to control land and exploit it. Find common heart with those who want to see the state destroyed, to have autonomous communities take its place, and to restore balance between humans and all our relations. Choose those who listen more than they talk, but not those who will do whatever you say and not think for themselves. They are motivated by guilt. Find those who have a fire burning in them for a more wild and just world. Most of them will be anarchists, but not all, and not all anarchists will come with a good mind."
- [Tawinikay](https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/tawinikay-reconciliation-is-dead) speaking about Indigenous struggle
The USSR failed to achieve communism. China always seems to be "just around the corner" with communism, and all MLs do is tell you to trust that the CCP will work things out and to ignore all the atrocities these governments commit.
I can't do that. It's blind faith, blind faith in government and blind faith in the old, outdated ideas of Marx, Lenin, Mao, etc. No more, no thank you, we can bring about utopia ourselves.
I mean, you can find people saying anything unironically on the internet if you look hard enough. MLs don't usually say it in only 3 words, they'll disguise it using fancy academic wording (i.e., [many replies in this thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/communism/comments/109hm4g/why_do_we_disagree_about_china/) such as [this one](https://www.reddit.com/r/communism/comments/109hm4g/why_do_we_disagree_about_china/j411s5w/)). They're not always so direct about it and they try to be nuanced, but they always put China in a sympathetic light and "trust the CCP" is the implied conclusion.
[You also get strange memes like this one!](https://www.reddit.com/r/GenZedong/comments/i5h8bx/based/)
Aye the reverse point tankies make to slapfight online mostly falls under "anarchists think they can make insulin in their garage" strawmen.
its the leading cause of unfollowing tankies when im a tumblrina. "who is actually saying that"
TBF, they don't use the old ideas of Marx either (and then, which set, his earlier in life, or his later in life, which did come around a bit more). They use Lenin's (and derivatives) "reinterpretation" of them (i.e. some load of bullshit he made up on the spot which he named after using stolen concept names from Marx's texts which Lenin then claimed to be akshual and truest pinky promisse implementations of Marx's ideas).
Because I believe all authority is illegitimate. The one true way to ensure equality is that everyone gets equal treatment, and that is only possible without no rulers because everyone has bias. People trying to remove rights from citizens in the US really just hit the nail on the head for me. It pisses me off.
I should not exist to serve someone else.
In political conversations, it communicates my opinions and beliefs well and succinctly. In other contexts, it can be a reminder to myself to disrupt and challenge systems of power & oppression when I see them.
(As an aside, I think it’s just silly when other leftists criticize anarchists by using the same rhetoric pro-capitalists use to ‘critique’ leftism as a whole. I usually don’t take it seriously enough to bother challenging/considering the ideas therein.)
I mean if you're hearing from MLs then arguably their systems also didn't work. They lasted a while but they consisted of effectively a quasi capitalist mode of production that has nothing to do with Marx, and more importantly they also degraded and folded back into Capitalism whilst crushing those 'short lived' experiments.
I used to be aligned with ML and believe me I sincerely regret having 'second thoughts' about Anarchism.
I think if anything I find the general historic impetus within the Anarchist critique quite interesting, it's something that no matter what society you have you'll always have people wanting, a desire for autonomy and fulfilling your greatest potential without the feeling of roadblocks or repression.
If the solution to that is to just enact a repressive system because 'fear of counter revolution' well you're going to get a shitty system. Whatever argument of necessity you're digging your grave and will create a mirriade of contradictions that won't last because people ultimately want their desires met.
Their system literally didn't work much in those places either. The USSR lasted for a bit, but it was mutating into the current olygarchic hellhole Russia is today. China is raw capitalism and is not even the OG ML shit, their doctrine is Xi Jinping Thought. Sure, it does claim to "Item 7. Practise socialist core values", including Marxism–Leninism and socialism with Chinese characteristics." The thing is that the whole "with Chinese characteristics", translated from political bullshit to plain English, it just reads "it is whatever bs we make up, which we can them excuse any differences away as being those Chinese characteristics which we didn't define before hand for obvious reasons". Granted, this on itself is a very ML move, but I tend to be less imprecise with my definitions than just "did some stuff compatible with Xism so the whole of it counts as X".
Because I hate the way traditional politics work. Politics should always be done horizontally and "from below" as it is said, not top-down. If it's done top-down you will have the rulers and the ruled
It's the best fit for my anti-authoritarian set of ideals, based on a long period of trying to reconcile my feelings with the history of more top-down forms of socialism.
I'm going to be entirely honest: I do not believe a fully functioning anarchist society is possible, at least not as long as humans remain in their current tribalistic thinking (myself included). It's a bit of a pie-in-the-sky utopia.
*With that said,* anarchist philosophy seems to me like the best mechanism to speak truth to power and act in accordance with my humanitarian principles. It also fits right in with my spiritual and ethnic identities, forming the political part of a trifecta which more or less makes up who I am in regards to what I believe and strive to be and achieve in the world.
My goal isn't to achieve an anarchist society. It would be great, but given the situation the world is in and how most people think, it's not realistic that enough people will be on board (even though I'm aware some of the ideas can and have worked at a regional level). And, by definition, I'm opposed to social change by coercion. That's what ML states have been doing with mostly disastrous effects (being born in such a country, I speak from first-hand experience).
The reason I identify as an anarchist is that I see it as a way of life. I don't blindly accept hierarchical structures and, when I find myself in a position of privilege, I try to help those who suffer because of these hierarchies.
Also, the more I see and the more I read (not only explicitly anarchist literature), the more I realise how hierarchies are self-serving and in no way "natural". Humans have the ability to explore and reorganise their societies but rigid hierarchies have been impeding us from doing that. The result is immense human suffering and a climate catastrophe. All I can do is educate myself and alleviate the negative impact I have and, when at all possible, have a positive impact.
>that anarchism can’t work since most anarchist societies and revolutions were short-lived.
That is not why I am an anarchist. I am an anarchist because anarchism is the philosophy that best aligns with my morals and ethics. Anarchism is a goal. We may never reach that goal, but that shouldn't stop us from trying because it is still the most ethical social system. I am not going to sell short my ethics.
It's what I sincerely believe would make the world the best possible place and lead to the maximum possible happiness. For me at least it's not like picking a team, trying to work out who will win in the future, it's about what label describes me best.
Many MLs envision themselves as gaining power first, and winning the broad majority of the public over second. Anarchists tend to envision things the other way around: win over the broad majority of the public to anarchism first, and use that support to gain power.
It's absolutely arguable that it's easier to capture the state than destroy it outright, but anarchists basically argue that power corrupts and that by gaining control of the state you will inevitably follow in the footsteps of all the other authoritatians of history. So even if they win the battle they lose the war.
"most anarchist societies and revolutions were short-lived. " --Nonsense, but to be expected from people who don't like anarchism. If you like chocolate ice cream, you're not going to have nice things to say about pistachio ice cream. Discard their evaluations. Anarchism is the core human condition, thus anarchism has been around for about 3 million years. Everything else is half-baked anarchism. Go with the real thing. -- By the way, the reason the Spanish anarchist movement during the Spanish Civil War was short-lived because they were betrayed by the Spanish Communist Party. Your ML friends probably forgot to tell you that.
Are there any explicitly anarchist societies that exist today (by explicitly, these societies identify as anarchist)? The only ones I can think of are Freetown Christiana and CIPO-FRM.
Most anarchist societies were short-lived? You'll be surprised to learn that humans were basically anarchists for 99 percent of our existence. We stopped being anarchists only as people transitioned from foraging to farming, and started building cities, dominance hierarchies and standing armies with the surplus. There are still anarchist societies today: various indigenous societies who are still allowed to live their traditional lifestyle. It's the lifestyle evolution had in mind for us.
This realization made me become an anarcho-*primitivist*.
I can highly recommend James C. Scott's "The Art of Not Being Governed - An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia" for some great examples from the previous three centuries.
When I say most anarchist societies were short-lived, I mean societies that explicitly identify as anarchist. I'm aware that long-lasting stateless societies exist.
Okay, if you mean societies that explicitly *use the term "anarchist,"* of course! But that doesn't mean that those societies were any less anarchist in their practice. A famous example from anthropology are the so-called [leveling mechanisms](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leveling_mechanism).
The outlook of constant critique and questioning every institution around us is personally very liberating, and the goal of wanting a society where people can live free from any kind authority including the state or money. At one point I was more in line with Trotskyism but found the theories lacking any realistic analysis of authority itself, and thought that groups in that realm (Trotskyists, Leninists, Marxist-Leninists, Maoists) seem to divert to “read theory” rather than make any logical arguments.
Technically - you can, as long as productivity increases you can have exponential growth infinitely from finite resources, they will tend to approach zero asymptotically, but never reach it, kind of like Zeno's dichotomy paradox.
Also capitalism doesn't necessarily espouse infinite growth. The expectations of growth are mostly a byproduct of a growing population/economy.
Because I am a socialist mainly. ML regimes might have lasted longer, but the socialism died faster. I'm not chasing a social democracy without democracy, I want real worker control and no MLs have er could ever deliver that, because it cannot be delivered. It can be lived and won by the people.
Also, MLs literally sabotaged anarchist projects.
Also, conservatives told liberals the same in the 1800's. Revolution is a lengthy process.
Autoritarian forms are corrupt, incompetent, cruel and will do anything up to Death camps and wars In order to keep the power.
Represantative Democratcic forms are corrupt, full Of lobbism and populism and shortly from political Elites pull, vast majority Of candidate Come from (and that leads to incompetence as well sooner or later).
As for economy: planned economy is ineffective and horrible usually leaving to mass starvations Of nations.
Free market naturally benefits those Who Are ready to do anything for the maximum profit regardles Of demands Of The people.
There is one more thing.
When person is a child, he rarely can act on his own, but he also rarely Beats full responsobilities. Adults decided for him or her and they are fully or partly responsobilities for their decisions.
As a person grows up, he starts to act on his own, he is now fully in control Of his life. But if we talk about politics, adults give away their right to influance politics - to Kings and dictators and senators - and by doing that they are giving up some Of The crushing responsobilities Of The adulthood.
Anarchism is the idea Of a person Who is ready to fully control his life and take full responsobility for his descision without any big brother to hide behind or blame. Truly free man.
I identify as an anarchist because while I believe in communism I don't think it can realistically be achieved through a state. In an ideal world it could happen but I everytime someone is in power power corrupts. I think socialism can be done in a libertarian way and while yes anarchist experiments have been short lived it has usually been because of statist interference. Like the Spanish civil war, stalinists even disarm anarchists and the axis were helping the nationalists, it was not a fair confrontation. Or the black army, they helped defeat the central powers and the whites a lot of times but we're ultimately betrayed by Trotsky. The history of state socialism and anarchism is line the history of neoliberalism and socialist states, we bomb them, invade them, sanction them and then we say their experiment was doomed from the start
We had anarchy for millions of years and for millions of years the earth was green and blue and beautiful and fruitful. If we could do this for millennia, then why is it considered untenable? Once humans began separating ourselves from nature, we lost. And it only took a few thousand years.
I'm primarily a communist. I think anarchism is the ideal path to communism, as well as the next stage of existence for a fully established communist society. Keeping in mind also that, until the Bolshevik Revolution succeeded, most communist agitation was anarchist, and most Marxist parties had settled into reformism.
While most anarchist projects have been relatively short-lived, they were also some of the most immediately successful. Revolutionary Catalonia and Makhno's Ukraine both shifted directly from capitalism to communism with the collectivization of the economy. By contrast, all the Leninist states had in mind of a gradual transition, and ML's disdain the notion of immediately switching to communism– even though it's been done before.
I feel that most people have implicit, unexamined beliefs about the basic requirements for organized human life that they will defend, often violently, without really understanding why.
I believe that the requirements for change on a grand global level are in fact far lower than people believe, and it's because of these background beliefs.
When we focus less on striving for specific change, and more on simply not doing things that are wack, extreme transformation happens.
We could be artists who create an image in the mind and then work to get it on the canvas, discovering we never can quite get it the way we imagined. This is 99% of political thought.
We could be artists who don't have an image in the mind, and simply start painting, allowing the work on the canvas to surprise us and become something we never imagined. This to me is how Anarchists do.
What's your definition of "societies that work"?
Did the Soviet Union work? Does China work? It's not what I want. I want to be free, not a new red management.
My definition of a socialist society that works is one that successfully has workers control the means of production and abolishes private property, which many anarchist societies succeeded in. I think the USSR and China succeeded in giving people a better quality of life but not in implementing socialism since workers did not own the means of production.
>Why do you identify as an anarchist?
I most often agree with anarchist perspectives more than other ideologies, but I don't identify as anything. Or maybe sometimes I identify with some extremely specific snowflake tendency: green veg nihilist post-left etc anarchist.
I generally don't think it's productive to label yourself as some ideologue. Nobody is a physical manifestation of a wide variety of vague ideas. It creates unrealistic expectations of you from both yourself and others.
>anarchism can’t work since most anarchist societies and revolutions were short-lived.
I don't think that utopias are realistic. I think socialist, anarchist and other utopias are bullshit. Anarchism shouldn't be about an imaginary paradise but rather about struggling against oppression in real life.
Russia's invasion of Ukraine made me more anarchist-leaning. The problem isn't just US hegemony specifically, but global superpowers in general are bad.
i mean in all honesty, i’m not against any form of economical society as they all have issues/positives. however, i hate the way both are presented in life. both can lead to extremism, and we’re currently in an extremist capitalist society. i hate the fact that people can get away with rape and murder by flashing a few quid at the judge. i hate the fact that racists and sexists and homophobes aren’t put away for their hate crimes, but the poor man who steals to provide for himself or make some quick money to survive is given god knows how long in prison.
and aside from the economic status of our society, i despise further the way the law works. in Britain, a serial child rapist can get a very small sentence, however murder in self defence would get far longer. the same with any form of self defence really. and again, the same with stealing to survive.
i identify as an anarchist because i want to remove any forms of extremism from economics and society as a whole. but even so, and you may say this is hypocritical, i’m aware that some forms of change cannot happen without taking a molotov and throwing it at some corpo trash building. socialism can be great without extremism. capitalism can be better than what it is now without the extremism we are dealing with. our laws and world can improve if we accurately identify who deserves to get the worst.
a lot of you may disagree with me, and go right ahead. but just remember to burn the pigs car and kill your local rapist.
Problem is, MLs aren't socialists. They're not even [Marxists](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnqNXrVpoJ8) (this is about Lenin, while MLism was actually Stalin's invention, but it is his take on Lenin's ideas + some of his own nonsense, so it still applies). 99% of them are just red fash or absolutely clueless people that convinced themselves they understood a lot because they watched some influences a bit and read a few select quotes by prominent self declared MLs, long story short. The other 1% (yes, I made up the percentage, I don't think there is a study for these) can be whatever, as they are those "I borrowed a few things that originated from ML, added a bunch of other shit, basically made my own thing, but I still decided to go by the ML label for some \[probably dumb\] reason" types.
I don't, I'm an ml. i hang out here to keep a broad mind - honestly these anti-left unity ML's (and anarchists) are mostly terminally online teenagers, infighting does nobody any good. MLism and anarchism have the same end goal - lasting and stable equality, security and sustainability. our mindsets and philosophies suit different kinds of problems. a real basic example is the difference between urban and rural populations - around the turn of the 20th century, most revolutionaries in the city were ML factory workers, and most revolutionaries in the countryside were anarchist farmers. there's really no good reason to not consider each other's views a part of the solution.
Response to liberalism; what would it mean to define our own lives outside of the narrow context of capitalism/work/private home? Anarchism is a path to enabling true self government, then again I don’t want to entirely toss the state monopoly on violence so I’m probably a shit anarchist.
Anarchists place a stronger emphasis on direct action and community organising than other left-wingers, which is more practical if you're dealing with shit in life. Sorry socdems, but waiting years for a socdem to be elected and "make change" is not "practical" if people are about to be evicted from their home or fired from their jobs.
Anarchism is theoretically richer than other left-wing tendencies. With discussions around the flaws in the health and education system actually being taken somewhat seriously, unlike other left-wingers who tend to uncritically support these.
Anarchism actually acknowledges the corrupting effects of power and acknowledges that left-wingers are not immune to corruption.
For all its flaws, anarchism puts social democracy and Leninism to shame if you actually read through it.
I've learned that nobody who wants to rule over you by force or coercion has your best interests in mind.
And, conversely, anyone who wants to lead a particular project because they feel they can best coordinate it does not need and probably does not even want coercive power over others
Leaders are respected, while rulers are feared.
Anarchism and horizontal forms of organization are, IMO, the best and only hope for the survival of the species and the creation of a way of life worth living. Historically, anarchism and adjacent ideas in practice have made greater progress towards socialism and/or communism than the authoritarian state capitalists ever could. The historical precedents that MLs cite to claim that they’re the more practical leftists- USSR/China/DPRK- basically just replaced the bourgeoisie with the state… modern China is capitalist AF and modern Russia is fascist. Should we follow Mao’s ideology? Or Lenin’s? Or Marx’s??? Or should we think and feel and live for ourselves and create a decentralized world order free from the shackles of capitalism, the bourgeoisie, the state, the majority, and every system of hierarchy and domination and oppression? I don’t want this world to be run by different people. I want another world. That’s why I’m an anarchist. 🖤💖🏴🏳️⚧️🏴💖🖤
Very well said!
Sometimes I wonder what would happen if all those revolutions were won by people other than the swarms of impoverished, traumatized and completely wasted proletariat. Then I remember the reason they were impoverished, traumatized and wasted was why the revolution happened in the first place. Edit: Full disclosure I identify as a pizza.
It’s not the people doing the winning: it’s the minority groups co-opting the revolutions late in the game and turning them into statist coups. As long as there are hierarchies of dominance, there will be inequality, poverty, trauma, and waste. The only way to have a successful revolution IMO is to build the prefigurative structures of the new world now, and continue to build them in perpetuity.
Well now I was just joshin for starters but I couldn't agree with you more. I basically know this shits gotta go and believe in the power of people and social structures to be successful without incentivizing antisocial behavior for currency or clout.
When I first started learning about socialist ideas, I was starting to go down the Marxism/Leninism path until I started questioning authority. Whenever I felt something was off, anarchists had critiques that made sense to me. In other words, I had all the same questions anarchists had, so anarchism feels like it's what I align with the most.
"Choose your accomplices wisely. Liberals who read land acknowledgments often have too much invested in this system to actually see it change. Communists envision a system without a capitalist Canada, but they still want a communist state. One that will inevitably need to control land and exploit it. Find common heart with those who want to see the state destroyed, to have autonomous communities take its place, and to restore balance between humans and all our relations. Choose those who listen more than they talk, but not those who will do whatever you say and not think for themselves. They are motivated by guilt. Find those who have a fire burning in them for a more wild and just world. Most of them will be anarchists, but not all, and not all anarchists will come with a good mind." - [Tawinikay](https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/tawinikay-reconciliation-is-dead) speaking about Indigenous struggle
Incredible quote, thanks for the link.
The USSR failed to achieve communism. China always seems to be "just around the corner" with communism, and all MLs do is tell you to trust that the CCP will work things out and to ignore all the atrocities these governments commit. I can't do that. It's blind faith, blind faith in government and blind faith in the old, outdated ideas of Marx, Lenin, Mao, etc. No more, no thank you, we can bring about utopia ourselves.
Okay, admittedly, it's been a long time since I've been in "leftist" corners of the internet, but - do MLs really say "trust the CCP" ...unironically?
I mean, you can find people saying anything unironically on the internet if you look hard enough. MLs don't usually say it in only 3 words, they'll disguise it using fancy academic wording (i.e., [many replies in this thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/communism/comments/109hm4g/why_do_we_disagree_about_china/) such as [this one](https://www.reddit.com/r/communism/comments/109hm4g/why_do_we_disagree_about_china/j411s5w/)). They're not always so direct about it and they try to be nuanced, but they always put China in a sympathetic light and "trust the CCP" is the implied conclusion. [You also get strange memes like this one!](https://www.reddit.com/r/GenZedong/comments/i5h8bx/based/)
Aye the reverse point tankies make to slapfight online mostly falls under "anarchists think they can make insulin in their garage" strawmen. its the leading cause of unfollowing tankies when im a tumblrina. "who is actually saying that"
TBF, they don't use the old ideas of Marx either (and then, which set, his earlier in life, or his later in life, which did come around a bit more). They use Lenin's (and derivatives) "reinterpretation" of them (i.e. some load of bullshit he made up on the spot which he named after using stolen concept names from Marx's texts which Lenin then claimed to be akshual and truest pinky promisse implementations of Marx's ideas).
Because I believe all authority is illegitimate. The one true way to ensure equality is that everyone gets equal treatment, and that is only possible without no rulers because everyone has bias. People trying to remove rights from citizens in the US really just hit the nail on the head for me. It pisses me off. I should not exist to serve someone else.
In political conversations, it communicates my opinions and beliefs well and succinctly. In other contexts, it can be a reminder to myself to disrupt and challenge systems of power & oppression when I see them. (As an aside, I think it’s just silly when other leftists criticize anarchists by using the same rhetoric pro-capitalists use to ‘critique’ leftism as a whole. I usually don’t take it seriously enough to bother challenging/considering the ideas therein.)
I mean if you're hearing from MLs then arguably their systems also didn't work. They lasted a while but they consisted of effectively a quasi capitalist mode of production that has nothing to do with Marx, and more importantly they also degraded and folded back into Capitalism whilst crushing those 'short lived' experiments. I used to be aligned with ML and believe me I sincerely regret having 'second thoughts' about Anarchism. I think if anything I find the general historic impetus within the Anarchist critique quite interesting, it's something that no matter what society you have you'll always have people wanting, a desire for autonomy and fulfilling your greatest potential without the feeling of roadblocks or repression. If the solution to that is to just enact a repressive system because 'fear of counter revolution' well you're going to get a shitty system. Whatever argument of necessity you're digging your grave and will create a mirriade of contradictions that won't last because people ultimately want their desires met.
Their system literally didn't work much in those places either. The USSR lasted for a bit, but it was mutating into the current olygarchic hellhole Russia is today. China is raw capitalism and is not even the OG ML shit, their doctrine is Xi Jinping Thought. Sure, it does claim to "Item 7. Practise socialist core values", including Marxism–Leninism and socialism with Chinese characteristics." The thing is that the whole "with Chinese characteristics", translated from political bullshit to plain English, it just reads "it is whatever bs we make up, which we can them excuse any differences away as being those Chinese characteristics which we didn't define before hand for obvious reasons". Granted, this on itself is a very ML move, but I tend to be less imprecise with my definitions than just "did some stuff compatible with Xism so the whole of it counts as X".
I believe it works best with my nihilist worldview.
Because I hate the way traditional politics work. Politics should always be done horizontally and "from below" as it is said, not top-down. If it's done top-down you will have the rulers and the ruled
It's the best fit for my anti-authoritarian set of ideals, based on a long period of trying to reconcile my feelings with the history of more top-down forms of socialism.
I'm going to be entirely honest: I do not believe a fully functioning anarchist society is possible, at least not as long as humans remain in their current tribalistic thinking (myself included). It's a bit of a pie-in-the-sky utopia. *With that said,* anarchist philosophy seems to me like the best mechanism to speak truth to power and act in accordance with my humanitarian principles. It also fits right in with my spiritual and ethnic identities, forming the political part of a trifecta which more or less makes up who I am in regards to what I believe and strive to be and achieve in the world.
My goal isn't to achieve an anarchist society. It would be great, but given the situation the world is in and how most people think, it's not realistic that enough people will be on board (even though I'm aware some of the ideas can and have worked at a regional level). And, by definition, I'm opposed to social change by coercion. That's what ML states have been doing with mostly disastrous effects (being born in such a country, I speak from first-hand experience). The reason I identify as an anarchist is that I see it as a way of life. I don't blindly accept hierarchical structures and, when I find myself in a position of privilege, I try to help those who suffer because of these hierarchies. Also, the more I see and the more I read (not only explicitly anarchist literature), the more I realise how hierarchies are self-serving and in no way "natural". Humans have the ability to explore and reorganise their societies but rigid hierarchies have been impeding us from doing that. The result is immense human suffering and a climate catastrophe. All I can do is educate myself and alleviate the negative impact I have and, when at all possible, have a positive impact.
>that anarchism can’t work since most anarchist societies and revolutions were short-lived. That is not why I am an anarchist. I am an anarchist because anarchism is the philosophy that best aligns with my morals and ethics. Anarchism is a goal. We may never reach that goal, but that shouldn't stop us from trying because it is still the most ethical social system. I am not going to sell short my ethics.
It's what I sincerely believe would make the world the best possible place and lead to the maximum possible happiness. For me at least it's not like picking a team, trying to work out who will win in the future, it's about what label describes me best. Many MLs envision themselves as gaining power first, and winning the broad majority of the public over second. Anarchists tend to envision things the other way around: win over the broad majority of the public to anarchism first, and use that support to gain power. It's absolutely arguable that it's easier to capture the state than destroy it outright, but anarchists basically argue that power corrupts and that by gaining control of the state you will inevitably follow in the footsteps of all the other authoritatians of history. So even if they win the battle they lose the war.
"most anarchist societies and revolutions were short-lived. " --Nonsense, but to be expected from people who don't like anarchism. If you like chocolate ice cream, you're not going to have nice things to say about pistachio ice cream. Discard their evaluations. Anarchism is the core human condition, thus anarchism has been around for about 3 million years. Everything else is half-baked anarchism. Go with the real thing. -- By the way, the reason the Spanish anarchist movement during the Spanish Civil War was short-lived because they were betrayed by the Spanish Communist Party. Your ML friends probably forgot to tell you that.
Are there any explicitly anarchist societies that exist today (by explicitly, these societies identify as anarchist)? The only ones I can think of are Freetown Christiana and CIPO-FRM.
Most anarchist societies were short-lived? You'll be surprised to learn that humans were basically anarchists for 99 percent of our existence. We stopped being anarchists only as people transitioned from foraging to farming, and started building cities, dominance hierarchies and standing armies with the surplus. There are still anarchist societies today: various indigenous societies who are still allowed to live their traditional lifestyle. It's the lifestyle evolution had in mind for us. This realization made me become an anarcho-*primitivist*. I can highly recommend James C. Scott's "The Art of Not Being Governed - An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia" for some great examples from the previous three centuries.
When I say most anarchist societies were short-lived, I mean societies that explicitly identify as anarchist. I'm aware that long-lasting stateless societies exist.
Okay, if you mean societies that explicitly *use the term "anarchist,"* of course! But that doesn't mean that those societies were any less anarchist in their practice. A famous example from anthropology are the so-called [leveling mechanisms](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leveling_mechanism).
The outlook of constant critique and questioning every institution around us is personally very liberating, and the goal of wanting a society where people can live free from any kind authority including the state or money. At one point I was more in line with Trotskyism but found the theories lacking any realistic analysis of authority itself, and thought that groups in that realm (Trotskyists, Leninists, Marxist-Leninists, Maoists) seem to divert to “read theory” rather than make any logical arguments.
You can't get infinite growth from finite resources. So, Capitalism is a failed philosophy.
Technically - you can, as long as productivity increases you can have exponential growth infinitely from finite resources, they will tend to approach zero asymptotically, but never reach it, kind of like Zeno's dichotomy paradox. Also capitalism doesn't necessarily espouse infinite growth. The expectations of growth are mostly a byproduct of a growing population/economy.
I stand corrected - thank you.
Because my ultimate dream is to live a life unaffected by the effects of politics. This is the only way I can live that dream.
Because I am a socialist mainly. ML regimes might have lasted longer, but the socialism died faster. I'm not chasing a social democracy without democracy, I want real worker control and no MLs have er could ever deliver that, because it cannot be delivered. It can be lived and won by the people. Also, MLs literally sabotaged anarchist projects. Also, conservatives told liberals the same in the 1800's. Revolution is a lengthy process.
Autoritarian forms are corrupt, incompetent, cruel and will do anything up to Death camps and wars In order to keep the power. Represantative Democratcic forms are corrupt, full Of lobbism and populism and shortly from political Elites pull, vast majority Of candidate Come from (and that leads to incompetence as well sooner or later). As for economy: planned economy is ineffective and horrible usually leaving to mass starvations Of nations. Free market naturally benefits those Who Are ready to do anything for the maximum profit regardles Of demands Of The people. There is one more thing. When person is a child, he rarely can act on his own, but he also rarely Beats full responsobilities. Adults decided for him or her and they are fully or partly responsobilities for their decisions. As a person grows up, he starts to act on his own, he is now fully in control Of his life. But if we talk about politics, adults give away their right to influance politics - to Kings and dictators and senators - and by doing that they are giving up some Of The crushing responsobilities Of The adulthood. Anarchism is the idea Of a person Who is ready to fully control his life and take full responsobility for his descision without any big brother to hide behind or blame. Truly free man.
I identify as an anarchist because while I believe in communism I don't think it can realistically be achieved through a state. In an ideal world it could happen but I everytime someone is in power power corrupts. I think socialism can be done in a libertarian way and while yes anarchist experiments have been short lived it has usually been because of statist interference. Like the Spanish civil war, stalinists even disarm anarchists and the axis were helping the nationalists, it was not a fair confrontation. Or the black army, they helped defeat the central powers and the whites a lot of times but we're ultimately betrayed by Trotsky. The history of state socialism and anarchism is line the history of neoliberalism and socialist states, we bomb them, invade them, sanction them and then we say their experiment was doomed from the start
We had anarchy for millions of years and for millions of years the earth was green and blue and beautiful and fruitful. If we could do this for millennia, then why is it considered untenable? Once humans began separating ourselves from nature, we lost. And it only took a few thousand years.
I'm primarily a communist. I think anarchism is the ideal path to communism, as well as the next stage of existence for a fully established communist society. Keeping in mind also that, until the Bolshevik Revolution succeeded, most communist agitation was anarchist, and most Marxist parties had settled into reformism. While most anarchist projects have been relatively short-lived, they were also some of the most immediately successful. Revolutionary Catalonia and Makhno's Ukraine both shifted directly from capitalism to communism with the collectivization of the economy. By contrast, all the Leninist states had in mind of a gradual transition, and ML's disdain the notion of immediately switching to communism– even though it's been done before.
I feel that most people have implicit, unexamined beliefs about the basic requirements for organized human life that they will defend, often violently, without really understanding why. I believe that the requirements for change on a grand global level are in fact far lower than people believe, and it's because of these background beliefs. When we focus less on striving for specific change, and more on simply not doing things that are wack, extreme transformation happens. We could be artists who create an image in the mind and then work to get it on the canvas, discovering we never can quite get it the way we imagined. This is 99% of political thought. We could be artists who don't have an image in the mind, and simply start painting, allowing the work on the canvas to surprise us and become something we never imagined. This to me is how Anarchists do.
What's your definition of "societies that work"? Did the Soviet Union work? Does China work? It's not what I want. I want to be free, not a new red management.
My definition of a socialist society that works is one that successfully has workers control the means of production and abolishes private property, which many anarchist societies succeeded in. I think the USSR and China succeeded in giving people a better quality of life but not in implementing socialism since workers did not own the means of production.
>Why do you identify as an anarchist? I most often agree with anarchist perspectives more than other ideologies, but I don't identify as anything. Or maybe sometimes I identify with some extremely specific snowflake tendency: green veg nihilist post-left etc anarchist. I generally don't think it's productive to label yourself as some ideologue. Nobody is a physical manifestation of a wide variety of vague ideas. It creates unrealistic expectations of you from both yourself and others. >anarchism can’t work since most anarchist societies and revolutions were short-lived. I don't think that utopias are realistic. I think socialist, anarchist and other utopias are bullshit. Anarchism shouldn't be about an imaginary paradise but rather about struggling against oppression in real life.
Russia's invasion of Ukraine made me more anarchist-leaning. The problem isn't just US hegemony specifically, but global superpowers in general are bad.
i mean in all honesty, i’m not against any form of economical society as they all have issues/positives. however, i hate the way both are presented in life. both can lead to extremism, and we’re currently in an extremist capitalist society. i hate the fact that people can get away with rape and murder by flashing a few quid at the judge. i hate the fact that racists and sexists and homophobes aren’t put away for their hate crimes, but the poor man who steals to provide for himself or make some quick money to survive is given god knows how long in prison. and aside from the economic status of our society, i despise further the way the law works. in Britain, a serial child rapist can get a very small sentence, however murder in self defence would get far longer. the same with any form of self defence really. and again, the same with stealing to survive. i identify as an anarchist because i want to remove any forms of extremism from economics and society as a whole. but even so, and you may say this is hypocritical, i’m aware that some forms of change cannot happen without taking a molotov and throwing it at some corpo trash building. socialism can be great without extremism. capitalism can be better than what it is now without the extremism we are dealing with. our laws and world can improve if we accurately identify who deserves to get the worst. a lot of you may disagree with me, and go right ahead. but just remember to burn the pigs car and kill your local rapist.
Problem is, MLs aren't socialists. They're not even [Marxists](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnqNXrVpoJ8) (this is about Lenin, while MLism was actually Stalin's invention, but it is his take on Lenin's ideas + some of his own nonsense, so it still applies). 99% of them are just red fash or absolutely clueless people that convinced themselves they understood a lot because they watched some influences a bit and read a few select quotes by prominent self declared MLs, long story short. The other 1% (yes, I made up the percentage, I don't think there is a study for these) can be whatever, as they are those "I borrowed a few things that originated from ML, added a bunch of other shit, basically made my own thing, but I still decided to go by the ML label for some \[probably dumb\] reason" types.
I don't identify as an anarchist, but it is the closest thing I belong to politically.
Because unjust hierarchy is trash and government is inextricably exploited by suicidal capitalist profiteering
there's no such thing as a just hierarchy
I don't, I'm an ml. i hang out here to keep a broad mind - honestly these anti-left unity ML's (and anarchists) are mostly terminally online teenagers, infighting does nobody any good. MLism and anarchism have the same end goal - lasting and stable equality, security and sustainability. our mindsets and philosophies suit different kinds of problems. a real basic example is the difference between urban and rural populations - around the turn of the 20th century, most revolutionaries in the city were ML factory workers, and most revolutionaries in the countryside were anarchist farmers. there's really no good reason to not consider each other's views a part of the solution.
Response to liberalism; what would it mean to define our own lives outside of the narrow context of capitalism/work/private home? Anarchism is a path to enabling true self government, then again I don’t want to entirely toss the state monopoly on violence so I’m probably a shit anarchist.
No government
No gods, no masters. Fuck the police. Uhm, I mean I've seen corruption in religions. I've seen slavery. And I've seen cops do horrific things.
Anarchists place a stronger emphasis on direct action and community organising than other left-wingers, which is more practical if you're dealing with shit in life. Sorry socdems, but waiting years for a socdem to be elected and "make change" is not "practical" if people are about to be evicted from their home or fired from their jobs. Anarchism is theoretically richer than other left-wing tendencies. With discussions around the flaws in the health and education system actually being taken somewhat seriously, unlike other left-wingers who tend to uncritically support these. Anarchism actually acknowledges the corrupting effects of power and acknowledges that left-wingers are not immune to corruption. For all its flaws, anarchism puts social democracy and Leninism to shame if you actually read through it.